POKE SALAD

The swing of a wire mesh basket of crickets
singing on their way to pond water
could cadence my feet as they scuffed through the dust.
The tips of our cane poles teased dragonflies
with up and down places to land and wait.
Appaloosas rub-scratching on fallen down fences
signaled for apples and brown sugar cubes
twitching ears and stamping hooves.

My grandfather never locked his truck.
Sometimes I’d turn around
to look back at it rusting there
beyond the cattle guard
as crooked as the bowed aluminum gate.
He tried to describe the difference
between Magnolia and Little Rock – 
why he never locked his truck while
I kicked weeds and tapped at the cricket cage.

In pastures where cotton once turned through soil
where poke salad rose between cross ties and fences,
mockingbirds launched straight into the glass
of the patio door to fall asleep dead on the grass.
Drunk on poke berries.

We peeled away yellow fish scales some midnights
under pollen painted wind chimes
and the yips of dogs catching snakes by the lake
their noses upturned in shifting air
when an armadillo slid along the fence line
as blind as the bats that live in the barn
who see with sound and eat with their ears.

“Granddaddy” I ask - half shaking his chair 
with bloody hands I could wash six times a day
that still smell like fish no matter 
how much Lava Soap I try to twist between them,
“Do the horses ever swim in the pond?”

“Sure they do.
But I taught them to keep away from there
when we go fishing.”

He’s cleaning his knife,
the one he won’t let me hold;

“Do they know when we’re going fishing again?” 

His laughter.